Here Be Magic
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: 'Magic isn't real.' Or at least that's what everyone in the village keeps telling Charlie. Too bad for them, he knows it's not true. After all, he has some, and one day he'll leave this place behind and find the dragons of old. Medieval!AU, for Dessie.


Dessie, I hate you and your wonderful prompts. Enjoy.

Written for the Potions Class on Harry Potter's World: Boomslang Parts - (Characterization) Venomous, (word) hours, (feeling) Threatened.

 **Here Be Magic**

Dragons. There were legends about them, stories so old no one remembered where they came from or their exact wordings.

Just impressions, ideas. Those were all that remained of the dragons of old, who were said to be taller and bigger than a house, could fly higher than the highest mountains, and could spit fire as easily as humans breathed.

That, and a few lines from an old folk song, hummed by campfires by kids hunting for a thrill.

It went like this:

 _"Go north, go north, with wings on your feet  
North with the wind, where the three rivers meet  
Look all around you and see  
Deep in the forest, there dragons will be."_

It was Charlie's favorite story, not only because it talked about dragons, but also because those few lines sounded like a riddle, and if there was one thing that Charlie loved as much as dragons and adrenaline, it was riddles.

Growing up, he was sure dragons were real. If he could just find one, he kept saying, then people would see.

"Dragons aren't real," everyone in the village laughed in his face. "Or if they were it was a long time ago."

His mother explained it all to him when he turned ten. There were no real dragons, she said. The dragons were a metaphor, a way for people to explain events they didn't know how to explain otherwise.

"Like magic?" Charlie asked, eyes cast downward.

"Exactly like magic," his mother had replied, tucking his hair behind his ears and wiping away his tears. "It exists, but only in our minds and hearts. That's the most precious magic of them all. Now go on, clean yourself up and go help your brothers in the garden."

Charlie had five brothers: one older than him, the others younger. He also had a little sister, but Ginny was way too young to be doing anything but drool and blabber nonsense from her crib.

That wasn't all Charlie had though, no.

You see, despite his mother – the entire village, even – insisting that magic and dragons weren't real, Charlie knew that to be false.

How, you may ask?

Well, it was rather simple.

Charlie had magic, you see. And one day, he would find the dragons and other people like him, who would be able to explain away the things he could do.

 **.x.**

Charlie wasn't sure when it had started, exactly. All he know was that one afternoon when he was five, after long hours spent kneeling in the dirt in the garden, planting diverse plants that would, hopefully, once spring came, help their parents sustain the family, he had reached into the soil, as if guided by some unseen force, and one of the seed he had just buried there had burst from the ground, ready to be harvested well before its time.

It was one thing for a child to be known to love stories of magic – all children did. Tales like these were part of folklore, they were normal, to be expected.

But for a child of the village to _have_ magic? Oh no, you couldn't get any further from normal than that.

Charlie found it weird, that everyone seemed to accepting of the stories – why, sometimes folks even acted out those stories during festivals – and yet, the instant there was even a rumor of something… _magical_ actually happening, everyone gathered up their pitchforks and readied the small clearing out on the edge of town (the clearing where those same festivals imitating magic happened, mind you) for a burning.

 _(Charlie had seen a burning once, an old lady people liked to call a witch)_

 _(Charlie had liked her – she looked after him and his brothers, sometimes, when their parents were busy. She baked the best biscuits, and she let them help with the animals if they behaved)_

 _(he could still hear her screams, sometimes – smell her flesh burning, a terrible odor that he couldn't help but associate with cooked meat now)_

His powers grew once he realized he had them though. It felt like something had burst within him, like a great dam had opened. Once it had been holding back these _abilities_ , but now that he knew about them, it was like his magic felt it wasn't worth it to hide anymore.

He could make things grow – not just plants but all living things, objects too. Fire burst from his fingertips when he got scared of the dark and he could cup light in his hand if he wished to.

He could make things fly or turn invisible, all this just by thinking it.

It was amazing, to know that somehow, someone somewhere had entrusted him with this power.

It was also terrifying, because in the stories, the one with the powers was always the hero, and terrible things happened to heroes.

It wasn't like he could do anything with those powers though, Charlie tried to reassure himself constantly. After all, coming out to his village, or even just to his family, was a guaranteed death sentence.

He had seen the way the other villagers had started to look at him, now that the innocent years of his childhood had passed, the way his mother had started to usher him along whenever they went to the village proper for supplies, until one day she stopped taking him.

His parents talked in the evening, their voices hushed but still not quiet enough that Charlie couldn't overhear them. They argued about him, about the way people had started to look at him.

"They look at him like he's a monster, Arthur!" His mother had whispered in worried tones. "They think just because he hasn't let go of this… this obsession with the occult, that he has to be part of it somehow. It's only a matter of time before they call a town meeting, and you know what will happen then!"

"Come on Molly, you're exaggerating things. He's still a kid. In a few months it'll all pass by – just wait until Charlie gets used to working out in the fields with the rest of the men. I can promise you he'll be too tired to think about magic or _dragons_ , and the men will see that he's just as normal as you and me," his father whispered back, trying to reassure her.

"But what if he doesn't have a few months, Arthur? God, you haven't seen the way they look at him sometimes, you haven't heard the whispers… I can't lose my baby, Arthur, I just can't!"

"You won't, Molly. We won't. Charlie will be just fine, you'll see. Yes, Charlie will be just fine," Arthur repeated, but even from his bed a room away, Charlie couldn't tell who his father was trying to convince more – his wife, or himself?

For the first time, Charlie truly realized that it might not even be some unknown danger that would cause him harm, but rather the people he knew, the village he had grown up in.

The room felt too small suddenly. It was like the walls were closing in on him, and his siblings' eyes, reflecting what little light was coming in from the moonlight peeking in through the window, seemed to judge him.

' _What are you?'_ They seemed to ask, and Charlie couldn't breathe.

He didn't even remember running, but run he did. He left the house and went deep into the forest, collapsing against an old tree trunk he had used to climb with other kids from the village, playing at being knights rescuing a damsel captured by a dragon.

What had happened to those friends? How hadn't he noticed how bad it was, that these people – his people – might truly attack him one day, just for being thought different than what they thought he should be?

He buried his head in his hands and tried to stop his body from shaking.

It was like this that Bill found him, less than an hour later. He came with a torch in his hand and a worried look on his face, and when he saw Charlie huddled against the old tree, he settled in beside him, tucking his younger brother against his shoulder.

They had always been the closest growing up: Percy, the third child, spent his time following their father around, trying to get him to teach him numbers and letters so that he could become a constable for the village, and the twins, born after him, had each other. By the time the two youngest, Ron and Ginny, had been born, Bill and Charlie had been too old to truly play with them.

"Hey, you know we won't let anything happen to you, don't you?" Bill asked.

"You heard then," Charlie muttered back, his voice muffled by the cloth of his brother's shirt.

"Yeah, we all heard," Bill sighed. "Dad's right, though? It'll pass, you'll see. You just need to stop talking about those things as if you believe they're actually real for a while, that's all."

"But I do believe," Charlie protested, leaning away. "I can't just _pretend_ that I don't, I can't – I just don't work that way, you know that Bill!"

"Well, you gotta try. At least for a little while, okay? Until the rumors stop."

"And if the rumors don't stop?" Charlie asked worriedly. "What then? Are you and Dad gonna do your _duty,_ and hand me over to be judge by the other villagers?"

Bill grasped Charlie's shoulder with a bruising grip. "Of course not," he replied instantly, offended. "Do you truly think that little of us? God, Charlie, is that why you're so worried, why you ran? You heard Mum earlier, you heard me – we won't let anything happen to you, I promise."

"But what if…" Even voicing what could happen was too much for Charlie, but luckily his brother understood him all the same.

"Well, if something happen, we'll deal with it then. In the meantime, we should try to get the village to think of you as a normal boy."

"But I'm not normal," Charlie retorted before he could help it. He bit his lips before he could say anything else incriminating.

Thankfully, his brother didn't take it that way, and just rolled his eyes. "Come on now, don't believe those idiots in the village. You're perfectly normal, Charlie, and soon everyone will see it the way I do, the way everyone in this family does.

"Now come on, let's get back. Mum's getting worried, you know how she is."

Bill stood up and brushed his pants off before extending a hand to Charlie so he could get up too.

This was the moment, Charlie could feel it. He could tell someone, confess to his brother, show him the things he could do.

For an instant, Charlie allowed himself to dream about what such a world could be like, where magic was accepted widely, where he wouldn't have to hide from his family but where they could instead join him. A world in which his brother would accept him and keep his secret.

An instant, and nothing more. Charlie plastered a smile on his face, grabbed his brother's hand, and let himself be pulled up.

It wasn't that he didn't trust Bill.

It was that, with his own life on the line, he couldn't take the chance that he was wrong about this.

 **.x.**

His father and brother were right. The village did quiet down once they saw that Charlie was joining in more 'normal' activities, such as farming or helping with the animals, just like his older brother did.

Charlie relaxed slightly, though he never forgot what could still happen if he wasn't careful. He learned knife fighting from his brother, and later from strangers passing by, and paid close attention to the way his mother used plants to cook or heal.

Something, an odd kind of instinct, told him that he might need that knowledge one day.

And through it all, Charlie was plagued by this intangible fear that he didn't belong and would be found out. He felt threatened, but not by anyone in particular. No, it was so much worse – the village's very existence, it seemed, was what threated Charlie's life.

Still, all this could have gone on forever, if it hadn't been for his sixteenth winter, when he met and fell for a foreign girl called Nymphadora, though she insisted on being called Tonks.

She was the most beautiful being he had ever seen – hair as dark as midnight, lips red and full, and eyes you could get lost in.

She was shorter than him, and clearly above his station from her way of talking, but somehow she never made him feel lesser.

They talked whenever they could, stealing moments as often as possible. Sometimes they just wandered in the nearby fields, Charlie showing her the places he worked in. Others she regaled him with stories from the world beyond his village, painting colorful pictures of cities so big you couldn't see an end to them or of forest that stretched far beyond what the mind could picture.

She told him of the sea, which was a vast body of water you could float in. He knew about it already, of course – he had heard the stories – but something about the way she described it made it seem more real.

In return, he told her the tales of his youth, the tales of magic and dragons. He gave her the riddle, the one his mother had sang to him every night as he went to bed for the first ten years of his life.

They talked about leaving too. Tonks wasn't there to stay anyway, but her parents liked Charlie and well, apart from his family there wasn't much but fear for him in this village.

They planned it all, how they would settle down somewhere, just the two of them. She would teach him to write and when they weren't working the earth around them, he would write down his stories to pass them down to their children.

This amazing woman wanted to live a simple life with him, and nothing would make Charlie more happy.

But something went wrong.

They were wandering the field, as per usual, when a white and black blur stroke, burying fangs deep in Tonks' calf, just above her right ankle.

Charlie only realized it was a snake when the beast retreated, leaving behind two wounds oozing with venom. He kicked it away, but it was too late.

Tonks collapsed in his arms, her leg unable to support her weight.

"It's gonna be alright, it's all gonna be alright," Charlie chanted as he looked at the wound.

"Come on, big shot, we both know that's not true," Tonks whispered back weakly, her smile a pale imitation of the one she had given him mere moments ago.

"No, no, I refuse, you can't-you can't-"

"Die?" Tonks finished for him, a sad look in her eyes.

She wasn't going to die. He couldn't let it happen. Surely there was something he could do, some kind of remedy he could use, something he simply hadn't thought of yet.

He put his lips to the wounds and sucked, trying to get the venom out. He spit back blood but he couldn't tell if it worked. He went to do it again, but Tonks rested her hand on his arm.

"Stop, Charlie. We both know this won't help. You'll only make yourself sick, and I don't want you to end up like me."

Blinking back tears, Charlie rearranged their bodies so he was kneeling by her laying body. He took her hands in his and closed his eyes tightly.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have seen it coming."

"Oh Charlie, there was no way you could have," Tonks reassured him, her voice growing weaker still. She looked almost dead already. Her face was so white it almost had a green tinge to it, and she was soaked with sweat.

But he could have, he thought. If he had asked, his magic would have warned him.

If he had asked, his magic would have stopped the attack before it had even happened.

Would it save her now, if he asked? Or was it too late already?

Beside him, Tonks' breathing had grown shallow, and she had closed his eyes. Wiping his tears away, he put his hand on her wound and held on tight, reaching out for that warm feeling he knew was his magic.

 _Please,_ he begged it _, please save her._

And miraculously, wonderfully, his magic obeyed. Even through his closed eyelids, Charlie could see the bright white glow coming from his hands.

Tonks screamed and her body arched, but the healing was over as quickly as it had begun, though to Charlie it seemed like it had lasted for hours.

Charlie lifted his hands, and nearly collapsed in relief when he saw that the wound had vanished. In fact, Tonks seemed to be regaining colors and vitality by the second.

He was so eager to see when she would open her eyes that he never saw the hit coming, something heavy hitting his head from behind.

The last thing he saw before his vision went dark were two of the farmers who worked on the field, congratulating each other.

The last thing he heard was, "he's a witch".

 **.x.**

He woke up in chains, and it didn't take him long to figure out what had happened.

The village's appointed leader was there, on the other side of the bars, and he was gloating.

"I knew you were no good, boy. From the moment you know how to talk you were asking about those _things_ , those _stories_. You may have fooled them all, but not me, boy, not me. I watched you, waiting for the moment where you'd stumble, as all those of your kind eventually do. It took some time, I'll admit – you're a stubborn one, that's for sure – but just like I said it would, it happened.

"Tell me boy, how many of your family are in on this… _witchcraft._ Is the girl in on it too, have you recruited her?"

Charlie kept silent, too stunned to reply.

Finally, after throwing around more accusations, the man left. Before that, though, he had one last thing to say, and he said it with a truly gruesome look on his face.

"Well, it doesn't matter. It'll all come up during your trial, tomorrow."

Charlie shivered, and not from the cold dampness of the cell he was in.

He knew the kind of trial the man was speaking of, and it was only a trial in name.

In truth, it was an opportunity to torture whatever the people wanted to hear out of the accused's mouth, until everyone was so sure of his guilt that the torture didn't faze anyone anymore.

He couldn't – he couldn't stay there.

He stood up, his head spinning. He leaned against the wall, trying to get his bearings and touched his head. His hair was matted with blood, no doubt from whatever had hit him earlier, but the bleeding had stopped. He had a nasty bump at the back of his head, but it didn't feel any worse than the time he had knocked himself out falling off a tree.

A couple days of rest, and he'd be right as rain.

Unfortunately, Charlie didn't have a couple days.

Once he felt he had steadied enough, he called his magic. It felt sluggish to answer – no doubt healing Tonks had taken more from him than he had thought – but it still did its job, unlocking the door with a soft click.

He ignored the voice that told him that Tonks might not be completely fine – he had just been revealed as a 'witch' and she had spent a lot of time in his company: she would be under suspicion. Hopefully it'd be soon dismissed as him bewitching her or something, especially considering how their situation must have looked, him standing above her unmoving body, his hands glowing with unholy night.

"Well, and here I was coming to help you escape," said a familiar voice from just ahead of him, causing Charlie to tense up.

The man the voice belonged to stepped into the light, keys dangling from his fingers, a teasing smirk on his lips. He carried a bag Charlie recognized as his on his back and had a lit candle in his hand, which told Charlie that it was, at the earliest, late evening.

"Bill? What are you doing here?" Charlie whispered urgently, taking a step back in surprise just as the tension unwound from his muscles.

"What does it look like? I'm getting you out of here! I told you," his brother explained, rolling his eyes, "no one is going to get to you."

Feeling oddly touched, Charlie smiled. "Thanks, but you shouldn't be here. It's too dangerous. If they saw you helping me, you know what they'll do to you, to the family. You're already in enough danger just from being close to me, I can't ask you to do more," Charlie protested.

"Well, if I had known that you could get out on your own I'd just have left this," he gestured at the bag on his shoulders, "somewhere you could find it. Now come, we need to leave."

They hurried off to the exit, Charlie asking his magic to silence their movements.

"This thing's useful," Bill noted when he noticed.

Charlie just grunted in reply, focused on getting his magic to obey. It still felt too slippery for his liking, and he didn't want to see what it could do when he was in this state.

"Is Tonks alright?" He finally let himself ask, once they had left the building and entered the cover of the nearby trees.

"Your girl's fine," Bill laughed. "She's a fighter, just like you. Tried to defend you, yelled at everyone too – told them what she thought of them. As you can guess, the people didn't like that much. Thankfully, her father intervened, saying that they were leaving town. There was some unrest, but they left unarmed. She gave me this for you," he added, handing Charlie a folded up piece of clothing.

On it, a map was drawn in thick black lines.

Charlie smiled. "Looks like I know where I'm going to go next."

He thanked his brother and asked him to tell the rest of the family goodbye for him.

And then, just as the sun was starting to peak through the tree's foliage, Charlie turned and headed up north.

He had a lady to meet, after all.

And who knew, maybe together they'd find those dragons.


End file.
